Some network management systems (e.g., network devices and/or software hosted at network devices) attempt to provide application-aware network management (or capabilities) based on static properties of network connections via which applications communicate. For example, some network management systems determine the identity of applications communicating via networks by identifying port numbers, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, domain names, or combinations thereof.
Other network management systems honor or respect quality of service (QoS) values contained within data packets with which an application on an end-user device can mark itself. Such network management systems implicitly trust the QoS information provided by applications to determine the identity of applications. Yet other network management systems rely on deep packet inspection (DPI) to identify applications. After determining the identity of one or more applications, such network management systems provision the networks (e.g., alter parameters such as quality of service (QoS) parameters or firewall parameters of the networks) based on the identity of the applications.